Climate, Peace and Security Fact Sheet Ethiopia
Ethiopia is currently experiencing one of its most severe droughts in decades following four consecutive failed rain seasons. The country has a high dependency on rainfed agriculture, and recent reductions in economic growth rates, rapid population growth, weak institutional capacity and high levels of conflict make it particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. While climatic conditions differ substantially across Ethiopia, the average temperature is projected to increase, and rainfall is expected to become more erratic. Ethiopia´s long history of drought, famine and locust outbreaks all further the need for increased capacity and resilience to cope with the projected impacts of climate change. Political instability and conflict have compounded the humanitarian situation in the country, hampering the ability of the Ethiopian Government to implement its climate adaptation and mitigation policies.
Evolving Japan–NATO Relations in the Leadup to the Madrid Summit
In response to growing security concerns in East Asia, Japan has increased its engagement with NATO at both the organisational and individual member-state level.
Ungdom og ekstremisme i 2021 – En studie av ungdommers vurdering av ekstremisme og forebygging av ekstremisme i Norge.
23. august 2022 kl 14:00 presenterer Håvard Haugstvedt funn fra en kvantitativ studie om ekstremisme i Norge, fra perspektivene til norske ungdommer.
Norden og Nato – med Joakim Reigstad og Kristin Haugevik
Podcast (in Norwegian) about the war in Ukraine, Nordic security cooperation and Sweden and Finland paths to NATO membership.
Krig i Europa – Hva skjer med Nordens forsvars- og sikkerhetspolitikk?
Podcast (in Norwegian) about Nordic security cooperation in the past and present, and how the war in Ukraine is affecting the Nordic states’ security and defence policies.
Krig i en verden av fremmed intelligens
This chapter investigates a number of issues related to the ongoing debates around artificial intelligence and its impact on the future of geopolitics and warfare. Through insights from science and technology studies (STS), the chapter seeks to question common assumptions in political science about the relationship between technology, war and politics. It will be argued that political science's treatment of these as independent elements and the subsequent simplified notions of technological and socio-political change must be altered in favor of a more inclusive way of thinking about socio-technical practices. This will improve our understanding of the war-technology relationship while providing a more fertile ground for discussing changes in the wake of the development of artificial intelligence.
The unsolicited rocket: a story of science, technology, and future wars
This article investigates the puzzling case of the unsolicited rocket: a Norwegian research establishment successfully developed a weapon system that no one wanted or had asked for that was later widely adopted. We argue that the ‘Terne’ weapon existed not because it was needed based on rational calculations about efficiency, but because of the narratives, coalitions, and competitive dynamics that surrounded it and made it useful. Conventionally, war and technology are often considered distinct ‘things’ with immutable essences, used as variables to explain other phenomena, rather than being examined on their own terms. In this case, we focus empirically on the configuration of sociotechnical imaginaries, and the capacities for action that arise out of it. In foregrounding sociotechnical systems, this is not a case of the ‘militarization’ of civilian society and research in peacetime. Rather, agency lay in competitive networks of narratives and coalitions between technologies, individuals, professions, technological communities, military organizations, and funding bodies, together shaping how ideas and technologies become authoritative and dominant.
Private infrastructure in weaponized interdependence
The ability of states to exploit private resources at an international level is an increasingly salient political issue. In explaining the mechanisms of this shift, the framework of Weaponized Interdependence has quickly risen to prominence, arguing that those states that are centrally placed in global networks can exploit their centrality given the appropriate domestic institutions. Building on this framework, I suggest that the relationship between states and the private corporations holding the resources states seek to exploit is more dynamic and contested than assumed. Drawing on developments in the industry for constructing and operating submarine cables, I find that a paradigm shift in the market has significantly limited the authority of states vis-à-vis key market players. The contribution of this finding is to expand Weaponized Interdependence as a framework, paying closer attention to the relationship between private companies and states. This expansion allows for the utilization of Weaponized Interdependence as a framework for a broader set of cases, explaining not only when a network is prone to weaponization but also the limitations states face when they seek to do so.